How do I navigate quickfix and location list entries with intuitive bracket mappings?

Explanation

The vim-unimpaired plugin by Tim Pope provides bracket-pair mappings for navigating quickfix and location list entries: [q moves to the previous entry and ]q moves to the next — mirroring the mental model of [ for backward and ] for forward throughout the plugin.

These mappings eliminate the need to remember :cprev and :cnext, and fit naturally with unimpaired's consistent bracket convention across many Vim workflows.

How it works

• [q — :cprev — jump to the previous quickfix entry
• ]q — :cnext — jump to the next quickfix entry
• [Q — :cfirst — jump to the very first entry
• ]Q — :clast — jump to the very last entry

For the location list (window-local), the same pattern applies with l:

• [l / ]l — :lprev / :lnext
• [L / ]L — :lfirst / :llast

Example

After running :make or a grep search that populates the quickfix list:

:grep -r "TODO" src/

Navigate results without leaving the keyboard home row:

]q  → jump to next match
]q  → jump to next match
[q  → jump back to previous match
]Q  → jump to last match
[Q  → jump to first match

Tips

• Unimpaired provides identical bracket pairs for arguments ([a/]a), buffers ([b/]b), and tabs ([t/]t) — all with the same first/last shortcuts via uppercase
• When the quickfix list is exhausted in one direction, unimpaired wraps around to the other end
• Use [l/]l in plugins that use location lists (e.g., ALE, coc.nvim) for per-window diagnostics
• Install: tpope/vim-unimpaired (vim-plug: Plug 'tpope/vim-unimpaired')